Friday, November 25, 2016

Trump dismisses NASA's research of climate change

Donald Trump, the President-elect, seems to abolish the division of NASA which is investigating the climate change. According to Trump, NASA should focus on investigating outer planets, and climate change is a subject to be addressed by other organizations.

His comment sounds rational at a glance. However, he also said that climate change was a hoax created by Chinese. It is absolute nonsense. Indeed, the cause of recent climate change is hard to be proven. Nonetheless, there is rich evidence suggesting the influence of the modern human activities on global warming during decades.

As I wrote before, climate change is a very complicated issue. It will take more than a century to prove the effect of current attempts for reducing greenhouse gasses. Nobody who is responsible for it will survive when the outcome becomes apparent. In addition, the climate is typical public goods. Thus, if only the US is eager to address the sustainability of the current environment, the benefit of the US' endeavor will be spread all over the world. Therefore, there is no incentive for the US alone to invest the maintenance of the environment.

For these reasons, a populist politician like Trump has no motivation at all to contribute to preventing the climate change. It is obvious that Trump is attracted by an exciting project such as deep space investigation than climate change.

In my opinion, regardless of the level of his business skills, Trump is unfamiliar to scientific sense. The US Scientists will suffer from opposition by politicians for some years, I am afraid.